Projects Flathead Porting: The Need For Speed

Also for none blown applications Master Flat-Head genius Ken Kloth developed, with the help of his Flattie wind tunnel, a different combustion chamber shape.....
Plus and amazing Port Divider for the center exhaust port

 

My understanding is the 1st picture (not my shot) is the new Navarro head.
The second picture is a version of the Harley KR head used by a Flathead racer more recently for a Flat-Head Cadillac

 

yes sir, that would be him.

 

Yes! I have seen those before, I believe Bored & Stroked posted them.
I believe the Navarro head posted is one of their standard heads. Here is the Hi Dome head, a lot more like the KR Also, notice the moved spark plug location.

 

That is a good find!

I do have to say, I prefer flat pistons over domed, and it looks like Ken Kloth like them too if this example is evidence of that.

 

That’s a nice intake. I was thinking along similar lines as the bottom section and adding mechanical fuel injection for bonneville.

 

Ken’s Merc sounded like a BBC going by…. I’ve never heard another FH sound like his. We both worked in bulk electrical power plant business and shared a set of units that were rare in for the 50-60’s. We talked on the phone a few time plus at Bonneville when I worked in Impounds measuring engines…He like Y Block guru Karol Miller were very smart men…

 

comparing anyone to karol is very high praise!

 

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/ideal-flathead-combustion-chamber.1236672/

 

@theHIGHLANDER A small probe you put ointment on & it runs on AA batteries? I think I know several women who have one in their nightstand.

 

Well if they need to check thickness I'd say there's an issue...

 

you've mentioned David Vizard a couple times. Years ago he did a lot of development on the BMC A-series engines in early Minis. For a while there he promoted the use of what he called Rimflo valves, take a look at his explanation in the big yellow Tuning the A Series Engine book. These are anti-reversion valves, exhaust valve that likes to let air out but hates air coming back in, intake likes to let air in but not out. Since you are flow testing, might be fun to mod an old pair of valves and see if they are worth it.

 

He has also written about it in his How to Build Horsepower series, as well as a few videos on YouTube. In the book series he talks about it more for valve dealing with 30 degree seat angles. I have thought about getting some cheap valves and making doing the cut he talks about to see if it actually works or not. I have a valve grinder and a valve seat grinding setup, so figure why not try things out and see what these ports and valves like better.

 

Instead of a full relief on the area above the valves in Henry ‘s famous engine, I chose to make the relief ONLY ON THE INTAKE SIDE and left the exhaust valve area untouched because the exhaust is expelled OUT under pressure and I felt(just my own unproven theory) a little bit more compression might enhance the motor to “breathe” a little better when NOT subjected to a full relief. Untested to my knowledge, but maybe you could prove or disprove this theory in your testing.

 

Vogel Machine. Last I knew they were getting over 1hp per cube on gas and 1.5 or more on alcohol. Single cyl tractor pulling engines, lot of rpm.

 

You can do the Vizard mod on intake valves on a lathe for sure. But his exhaust valve is trickier; certainly could do a clay mockup for flow testing. Anyway, in his little inline fours the anti reversion let him run longer duration cams without ruining low rpm performance.

 

Corey do you have a flow bench?

 

Just came across this thread. Very interesting. I also just discovered David Vizard and watched a bunch of his vids, so it’s interesting the OP also mentioned him. Far, far, far from knowing anything, but logic would seem to raise CR, increase flow, and increase atomization. Yes, way more in terms of the details as to how to achieve that plus the balancing of all those competing criteria. Looking forward to the progress.

 

Subscribed! I’ll be doing this with a Lincoln V12. I’ve got a stash of blocks and one of them has no main caps, which I may sacrifice to study the ports.

 

Check out these Factory 1950 Ford Cylinder Heads. The engineers at Ford must have found something in this specific shape. Look at the offset Spark Plug location, a small "V". The combustion chambers are offset per valve locations. Still not a lot of Compression. They were just loaded with Carbon before I got them even this clean.

 

Interesting”V” feature. It would be interesting to see what tech they had back then to do any research on the combustion flame front process. Not that it would probably matter on a flat head, but a sharp feature like that would seem to be a place for pre-detonation to occur - no?

 

I'm wondering if it was a relief for the cast iron machining operations ..... the centerline of any milling cutter is effectively stationary at all/any RPM and that feature is on the machining C/L.
Just found these CI heads online with a similar C/L relief too.

 

Went back snd pulled some pics of my heads that came off of a C69A I rebuilt. Has similar mark(s)/feature.

 

These '50 Ford heads are 100% cast. No machining in the combustion chamber, other than spark plug treads.
The "Swirlls" over the pistons are most likely from the "Mold", then these marks were transferred to the "Green-Sand" for casting. I don't think the little V is going to cause "per-detonation". The gas back then had lots of "Lead" (Tetraethyead {TEL}) in is back then.